First Kill and the Right of Passage
The moral case for thinking through the first time you do something.
The first time you do anything is a special thing.
Your first step, your first word, your first day at school, they're all big moments in our lives. It gives us a sense of transition from one part of life to the next one. When you're young, it's your parents who notice and understand the importance of these moments. You're not old enough to really understand what's happened. Though when you grow up it becomes part of your story. Your parents tell you about these experiences and it helps you understand yourself better. At a certain point however, it becomes your responsibility to take on these new experiences. Once you know that, you start to seek out these important events and they shape who you are more profoundly.
The first time you make a friend. The first time you play a sport or win a game, it can make you want to do that thing more or less depending on the outcome. An even more important thing is when you have your first kiss, go on your first date, have your first sexual experience. How you handle these things shapes your way of thinking and who you ultimately end up with. Your second time doing these types of things aren't nearly as important. The more you do them the less special they are. So making sure you choose wisely gives us a lot of anxiety. We want them to be worth it. Often seeking out stories from our family and friends about how their experience was. Trying to avoid making the kinds of mistakes they did. Not that it necessarily means you're not going to make mistakes. More than likely you'll just end up making new and equally painful mistakes. At least if you don't choose wisely.
We can even go back into history to see how they came about. Historically and to some extent today, one of the ways in which someone transitions from child to adult is through a ritual known as a right of passage. Usually part of a tradition that goes back centuries, these rituals can be as simple as going to a dance or for the whole community to throw a party in your honour. What they can also be however is seen as your first kill. A hunt taken up by you and often members of your family in which you go out into a forest, find an animal and kill it. These involve cooking and eating that animal in a similar ritual.
First Kill is fundamentally about this type of experience. Juliette and Calliope, as played brilliantly by Sarah Catherine Hook and Imani Lewis, are going through so many of these experiences themselves. Even though they might be going through them reluctantly in many cases, like Juliette in particular, they still have to go through them. Each of them comes to understand just how important these things are not only to themselves but also to their family around them. They had to make this commitment when they were Juliette and Calliope's age, so they expect their children to do them too.
It's a beautiful process and it's important to remember how powerful they can be.
Do yourself a favour and check out First Kill as soon as you can.
Watch First Kill on Netflix.